Through the Watching Glass – Medium
“There’s a case to be made that wearable technology can connect oneself to one’s environment more than it isolates, by providing context that we otherwise wouldn’t see. But often it’s the rest of the world that bears the burden of that. The data ones face collects could be used and monetized by Google or the third-party applications Glass runs. While that may be the choice of the wearer, there is little to no agency on the other side of the Glass eye prism.”
Forests Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying Properly – Smithsonian
The team decided to investigate this question in part because of a peculiar field observation. “We have conducted research in Chernobyl since 1991 and have noticed a significant accumulation of litter over time,” the write. Moreover, trees in the infamous Red Forest—an area where all of the pine trees turned a reddish color and then died shortly after the accident—did not seem to be decaying, even 15 to 20 years after the meltdown.
Return to Dead Mountain – Failure Magazine
“Fifty-five years ago today nine young Russian hikers pitched a tent on the eastern slope of Holatchahl mountain (a.k.a. Dead Mountain), deep within a remote wilderness area that could be described as the gateway to Siberia. Sometime that night or the next day all nine perished, most from hypothermia, but some from difficult-to-explain injuries. Despite a protracted investigation, authorities were unable to reconstruct what happened, eventually attributing the deaths to “an unknown compelling force.” Even today, the incident—now commonly known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, in memory of the group’s leader, Igor Dyatlov—remains as infamous and conspiracy theory-clingy in Russia as the JFK assassination is in the United States.”
Why Dads Matter – the Atlantic
“These statistics play out most often in the form of absent fathers—or the arrival and departure of serial father figures involved in romantic relationships with a child’s mother. (Moms still usually retain custody in a breakup or divorce.) Twenty-four million American children—one in three—are growing up in homes without their biological fathers, the 2011 Census says. Children in father-absent homes, it notes, are almost four times more likely to be poor.”
A Morbidly Obese Patient Tests the Limits of a Doctor’s Compassion – the Washington Post
“Awaiting his arrival, we try to shoot some X-rays. When we roll him onto his side, though, he turns an unnatural shade of blue-gray and can’t tolerate the position long enough for us to put the X-ray cassette behind his back.”
Arthur Chu’s Dangerous Game of Jeopardy! – The Toronto Star
“While others have bounced — framed photos of renowned jumpers hang in the studio’s Hall of Fame — Chu is like a rubber ball inside a paint-shaking machine. He makes wagers that seem insolent or slapdash — $5 on a Daily Double here, everything on another one there, twice betting to tie during Final Jeopardy. But all he’s really doing is following the algebraic wisdom of the number-crunching demigods embedded inside the show’s online community.”
____
Photo courtesy of The Hamster Factor.
